I was on a flex day today, which felt weird because I’ve taken so much time off since mid-August (with a week of field work in the middle there) that having my flex Friday fall on an already short week felt like a guilty pleasure.
So what’s the best way to ruin a perfectly good day?
Why make it a run day of course.
But my word was it a monsoon out there this morning! I was procrastinating putting my running gear on until the rain stopped, or at least lessened, but that didn’t seem to be happening any time soon, so I amused myself with some drawer and closet clean-out and organizing stuff.
Eventually the rain stopped, but I’m savvy to Mother Nature’s tricks and wanted to make sure it wasn’t just a vireo pause, so I waited longer. After the rain hadn’t come back for about an hour I resigned myself to some exercise and headed out.
And you know what?
Halfway through, at the farthest point from home….it started raining again. Of course it did.
I ran the latter half down the canyon east service road to the first parking lot and then started to walk it off towards home, when…..yes…..a slug got in my way and blocked my path.
As I crouched down to say hello and take some photos with my phone, I could see a car in my peripheral vision. And flashing lights. A ghost police car had stopped and I assume was suggesting, visually, that I move. I didn’t. There was room for him to go by, and no one coming the other way, and I was clearly not injured or seeking assistance, so I glanced at him, and went back to my communion with this little yellow fellow slowly heading across the asphalt in the wet.
The police car moved on.
A few moments later I heard a sound and saw a pair of feet next to me. I popped out an earbud and looked up to see a stranger on each side of me, curiously looking at what I was doing.
Yes, the weird woman is crouched down taking photos of a slug.
Busted again.
I made some arm wavy comment about having a thing for photos of slugs, they fascinate me. And then the one fellow got into my good books by asking if there were different types of slugs, the black ones, the yellow ones. And I have an opportunity to talk about banana slugs vs the invasive black slugs.
They were from Germany, and he said that he had big yellow slugs that had invaded is garden. So perhaps our slugs have become invasive in Europe as the European black slugs have done here? Seems like a fair enough trade.
I put my phone away and said goodbye and have a nice afternoon….and out of the corner of my eye as I walked away, I saw the fellow who’d asked the questions crouch down with his phone and start taking closeup shots of the slug.
My work here is done. I feel vindicated in my slug shots now.
A block on and the colours of the fallen leaves, made more saturated by the rain, made me pause for a few more shots….and as I took the photo of the mantle cover and the giant maple leaf next to it, the two walked past me and we had another funny exchange about me taking odd photos…
And so it goes.
Nature makes the best litter.